Re: Christmas- Priorities of Christmas

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon

Sunday, December 14, 2008

[Video clip. Pastor Burcham: “You know, I like going to get the mail this time of year more than any other time of year because I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a Christmas card or two in there. Sometimes, it’s from people who I saw just yesterday. Other times, it’s from people, well, we haven’t seen them for years and yet we seem to get a card from them every Christmas.”

“You know, Christmas cards are different than Christmas gifts. You don’t have to worry about whether it’s the right size or not. You don’t have to worry about whether they like it or not. Christmas cards are just inner connection. They’re a connection between two people or between two families. Sometimes, you open them up and there’s a letter talking about what’s been going on in their lives. Other times, there are photos so you can see how the kids have grown and then sometimes, it’s just a simple signature and, really, there doesn’t need to be anything more than that. It just means that they were thinking about you and you’re important in their life.” “Hey, Michelle, you’ll never guess who we heard from.”]

In these days of e-mails, text messaging, video conferencing, it’s kind of refreshing to get something low tech, like a Christmas card, isn’t it? There’s just something special about going to the mailbox and seeing a note from a friend or a family member and see their signature at the bottom of the card. It just seems so much more personal. In fact, my wife won’t let me run off mailing labels for the cards we send out. That seems simpler to me but no, no, no. She insists on handwriting each address. I guess that makes sense. That says something, too, doesn’t it? It means that you took a little bit of extra time, that you thought about each person as you wrote their name on the envelope. Christmas cards really, to me, are just a connection, a connection between people, a connection between family.

And when you think about it, Christmas is a time of connection. It’s a time of connection between us and God. After all, Christmas is when we celebrate the very fact that God left heaven and He came to live among us. Now that’s a connection point between us and God. And then when you think about why He came to live among us, He came to live among us because our connection with God had been broken. The sin that had entered into the world, the sin that’s in our life, it breaks the connection between us and God so His Son comes to live among us so He can reconnect us with the Father.
Yeah, Christmas time is a time of connection. It’s a time we should feel very, very close to our God. But oddly enough, Christmas time often is a time when we don’t feel connected. This time of year, with everything that’s going on, it’s very easy for us to feel disconnected from family, disconnected from friends and to be disconnected from God.

It’s interesting how it happens. There are really numerous ways in which we can become disconnected. Sometimes, most of the time, you really can’t pinpoint the moment in which you became disconnected from somebody else. One of the culprits of that is just our routine. Have you ever thought about that before? Routine sometimes is a way in which we become disconnected with people. You see, I would contend that you can actually live in the same house with somebody, talk to them every day and still not feel very connected to them. You can get up and you can visit with your spouse. You can hug your kids goodbye everyday at school but you get into this rut and you do the same thing every day, week in and week out, and, all of a sudden, it just becomes routine. And although you’re living in the same house, although you’re talking to them every day, do you ever get the sense that you’re all just living your own separate lives? Because of the routine. We become disconnected.

I wonder if it doesn’t happen with God. We get into a routine. We come to the same church at the same time on the same day and, I won’t point, but some of you sit in the same seats and you talk to the same people and you do the same activities every year around Christmas time and you just sort of get into a routine and you get into a rut. And it’s quite possible that, although you’re doing all of this churchy stuff, you don’t feel very close to God. Have you ever said the words, “You know, it just doesn’t seem like Christmas for some reason,” because you’re not connected?

Another culprit is busyness. We love to point to busyness. We point to busyness for anything and everything but especially when we talk about being disconnected. “Well, it’s just because I’m so busy because the schedules are just so full. You see, we have all these things going on in our life, everything with the kids or the grandkids. We have everything going on with our work. We have everything going on with all the celebration of Christmas and so we just don’t have time.” And so we’re disconnected. I realized this past week, it has been over 2 ½ months since I’ve actually spoken to my brother. 2 ½ months. It’s not that I’m mad at him and I’m pretty sure he’s not mad at me but, if you were to ask both of us, we’d say, “You know, we just got busy. There are just so many things happening that we just didn’t get the opportunity to connect.” How often do we fall on that crutch when it comes to our relationship with God? “Well, we’re just so busy.” In fact, we can even be busy doing the work of God and yet still feel disconnected from God. In fact, I’ll make a confession. This one’s a real challenge for me. It’s a challenge for me to stay connected and close to God this time of year. Now you’re thinking, “What is up with that? Your whole life centers around this. I mean, seven days a week, you’re dealing with God and things about God and you’re getting ready for the big celebration of His birth.” And it’s right. My whole life centers around it. That means day in and day out, from sun up to sun down, doing all of the work and all of the busyness and trying to keep up with the kids and their programs and trying to keep up with the social things, even though I’m busy doing all this stuff that’s spiritual, it’s easy to become disconnected from God. And, my friends, if that can happen to me, I have to believe that it could happen to you. You can get so busy and so caught up in the schedule that you actually disconnect from God.

There’s one more thing that causes disconnect. I call it the disconnecting event. You see, this is the time when you can actually point to an incident where you know that the relationship was severed. You can point to when the disconnect happened. Maybe it was a heated argument. Maybe it was a Christmas of the past where you really got into a fight with someone else, some heated words were exchanged, emotions were high and you haven’t spoken to that individual since. And you remain disconnected.

Can you point to an event that disconnected you from God? Even though you’re here, you don’t really feel very close to God. You feel like He’s far away. Because God seemingly didn’t answer the prayer that you’d been praying to Him, the cancer didn’t go away, the loved one died, the job disappeared, the kids keep drifting further and further away and so finally you just stop praying to God. You stop asking God and now the time when you need Him the most, the time when you really need Him to be close in your life is the time that He seems very, very far away, disconnected.

My friends, God wants to reconnect with you. In fact, God’s number one priority has always been to reconnect with His people. The birth of His Son witnesses to the fact that His number one priority is He wants to reconnect with His creation. Well, there are two things that need to happen, though, for re-connection to take place. Because if a relationship has been severed, then two things have to happen if they’re going to be joined back together.
The first one is this: Somebody has to make the first move. You’ll never be reconnected if two people keep going down parallel paths or they keep going further and further away from each other. Somebody has to reach out their hand. Somebody has to pick up the phone. Someone has to send the e-mail. Somebody has to make the first move. In our relationship with God, God makes the first move. God comes after us because God wants to reestablish His relationship with us, because God wants to reconnect with us. Listen to what St. Paul told us in 2 Corinthians. He is talking about how we are a new creation, we have this new life in Christ and this is what He says, “All this is from God who has reconciled us to Himself,” that is, who has reconnected us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation or the ministry of re-connection. You see, God has reconnected us and He’s the one that’s made the move. Remember, it is God who sent His Son into the world. It is God who became one of us and lived among us. It’s God who came to us. God makes the first move to reestablish His relationship with us.

The second thing that needs to happen if re-connection is to take place, if a relationship is to be restored, something has to change. If nothing changes, if everything stays the same, you’ll never be reconnected. In other words, somewhere along the way, the routine has to change. Somewhere along the way, the schedule has to be adjusted and somehow the hurts have to be healed but something has to change. And God changes us. You see, God doesn’t need to change. God hasn’t moved. God has stayed the same. So God changes us. God realizes that the very thing that caused the disconnect to begin with needs to be repaired. The thing that disconnected us from God is our sinfulness. It’s our disobedience. It’s our walking in the opposite direction of God and so God changes us. Once again, listen to what Paul says, “God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ.” He’s reconnecting the world to Himself in Christ. How? “Not counting men’s sins against them.” Not counting men’s sins against them? How does that work? He further clarifies, “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us so we might become the righteousness of God.”

Now think about that for a moment, my friends. The very thing God hates the most is the very thing that He becomes. The very thing that is the opposite of God, which is sin and unholiness, it says that God became sin for us. God took on the very thing that He hates so He can reconnect with us so He can change us, so He can change us from being sinful human beings to be human beings who are righteous in His sight. God changes us so He can reconnect with us because God’s number one priority is to reconnect with His creation.

My friends, our number one priority should be to stay connected with God. Or if need be, to reconnect with God. For that priority to take place, it probably means that we have to make some different decisions. It means that we have to re-prioritize some things in our lives. We want to say it’s the routine, it’s the rut of things that has caused this disconnect. Well, that means we have to re-prioritize. That means maybe we have to change things up. It’s comfortable to stay in our same routine. It’s comfortable to do the same thing day in and day out but if that’s causing a disconnect, then maybe we need to re-prioritize and we need to shake things up a bit. That means maybe some of you need to come to 10:30. It’s different. That will shake things up, right? That will get your attention. Maybe every now and then, next week, sit over on that side and you sit over on this side. Talk to somebody different. Change it up a bit so you notice what’s going on, so you can reconnect with God.

Busyness, you say. Maybe you have to readjust the schedule. I know what you’re thinking. Readjust the schedule? Do you know my schedule? Do you know my schedule? But the fact of the matter is our schedules are set by us and they’re set by the priorities which we put in place. I told you that I haven’t talked to my brother in 2 ½ months. Who set that priority? I did. Because I’ll tell you what, when he was going through his cancer and his cancer treatments, I talked to him on a weekly basis, sometimes two and three times a week. I am no less busy today than I was back then. But it’s priorities. It’s choices. Do we have to rearrange our schedule? Do we have to set the priorities so we stay connected with God? Do we have to make the time to read the Advent devotionals? Do we have to make the time to come to the midweek services? Do we have to make the time to just pause and talk to our God in prayer and make sure we stay connected?

Is it time for us to heal the hurts, to rebuild the relationship with others and with God? You see, that’s a matter of priorities, too. It’s a matter of choices. It’s easier to choose not to face the pain. It’s easier to choose not to have to go through that reconciliation process but if we want to reconnect with God, if something has happened that has severed your relationship with Him, isn’t it time now to make that the number one priority, to talk to Him in prayer, to listen to His promises, to hear His words that will heal your heart and to bring comfort?

This time of year, more than ever, is a time of connection. It’s when God entered into our world. It’s time for us to stay connected to Him or maybe even reconnect with Him. Here’s a practical idea for you. I haven’t given you all an assignment for quite a while so here’s your assignment for the next week. I still think cards, Christmas cards, are a great way to stay connected.  I want you to send a Christmas card to God. I want you to take one of your usual ones that you sent to all the other family, maybe you want to go out and buy a special one, I don’t care what it is, and I want you to send a Christmas card to God. Do it the same way that you would do anyone else. Do you usually write a letter? In fact, I would encourage it. Let’s write a letter to God. Only one rule here is you don’t ask God for anything. You don’t write a Christmas letter and ask people for things. You just tell them what’s going on in your life. If you have kids or grandkids, have them write a paragraph, what’s happening in their life, put it in the envelope. You have a picture of the family that you’ve been sending out to everybody else, put that in the envelope, seal it up and take it and place it someplace that’s meaningful. Maybe it’s underneath the Christmas tree. Maybe it’s by a nativity set. But by doing that, what you’re saying is I’m going to re-prioritize because my connection with God is more important than anything else. And so I’m going to connect with God, at least in this real way, through this card.

Because, my friends, God’s number one priority is to connect with you. Let’s respond by staying connected to Him. Amen.

Copyright 2008 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church